


Keep Me Believing It's With You

by Madzie



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Exploring the development that came behind the scenes, M/M, POV Nico, Post-Series, Pre-Series, from sexuality to powers to his relatoinships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 02:00:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10709808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madzie/pseuds/Madzie
Summary: It is between one breath and the next that Nico realizes he loves him.--OR--Nico gets to explore his feelings and powers so entirely, in ways never touched upon in canon. Basically my trying to come to terms with the way his emotionally touching story was cheapened for a gag.





	Keep Me Believing It's With You

“Hurry up Neek! We’re gonna miss it!” 

The subtle breeze of early winter wafts against them, a puff of flakes cascading in the threshold of the underpass, tangling in the long locks of Bianca’s jasmine scented hair, and bleeding into her warm laughter. Warm like the molasses cookies they just ate from their favorite little bistro right by the capital building, Warm like how it feels like snuggled into the quilts their boarding school provided on arrival, and the way Bianca never takes him out of her sight for long. Warm like the exact antithesis of this capital of all sharply renowned architecture where lofty men with pressed suits, and ladies with freshly curled hair, briskly walk without sparing a second glance to anything of the slightest inconvenience.

“I’m hurrying!” Nico wants to yell out in defense, pointing out how Bianca’s legs are plenty longer than his—on account of her being a full two years older—but then she slinks their hands together, and it gives him enough of a push to jump off the tarmac alongside her, and through the rapidly shutting doors. 

“Us one, subway zero!” Bianca preens as the pair sprawl—all long limbs and crooked angles— on to the nearest set of chairs that aren’t occupied by suit clad folks—ones who are obviously important and rich and have no time at all to deal with a couple of raucous kids flailing around in their sanctuary. 

“I can’t believe we almost missed our route cause you wanted that stupid hair band,” Nico grouses, the large winter coat making the crossing of his arms almost comical.

“Get off it sour patch,” Bianca pokes his pouty cheeks with a nail almost bitten raw. “Every girl in my year has one.”

“You’re better than all those girls,” Nico sniffs, not understanding his sister’s insatiable craving to be inducted into the gaggle of tube sock wearing, gossip ridden girls with pasted smiles and dreams of being married to some faceless doctor and running their own high tea every third Sunday of the month. 

“You just don’t understand Neek,” Bianca’s smile is fond—as if she were talking to a daft toddler rather than her brother. “But don’t worry about it. “I’ll help you understand all the dos and don’ts about etiquette—You know so you don’t commit any life shattering fopauxs.”

“Real generous Bianca.”

“What can I say, I’m always gonna be there for you baby bro.”

Nico roles his eyes heavenwards, “Yeah, yeah whatever.”

“Hey,” Bianca grabs his hand with a sudden desperate edge that wasn’t there before. “I mean it.”

“I know.” And Nico does. It’s always just been them—even in his hazy memories of their early life before the accident that effectively made them parentless—it’s always been him and Bianca against the world.

Nico’s always preferred it that way if he’s being honest.

 

***

 

“You like it?” Bianca’s enchantingly dark eyes are peering up at Nico from where she lies flat on her stomach in the small dormitory that they call home. Nico is still confused in the logistics of how the school permitted them to live together in the girl’s wing, but supposes it has something to do with the fact that they’re pitiful orphans with more money than what anyone could ever know what to do with, and the school is hoping for a new hall for their library.

“Oh B he’d look so cute with some polish,” Leanne—a pretty blonde daughter of some affluent diplomat—crows as she sweeps to drag Nico to where they’re huddled on the floor.

“Would you like that Neek?” Bianca prods once more—but not as if she were frustrated or angry or annoyed like Nico almost anticipated. No, none of that. Instead, her eyes were teeming with something like acceptance mixed in with the ordinary glimmer of love. It’s time’s like these, with her long tresses swept across one shoulder, and her dimpling down at him, that Nico swears she is the embodiment of what their mother must’ve been like once upon a time. Someone beautiful, and safe and above all else, kind.

“I mean I-It’s pretty.”

“Oooo and we can give you a whole new hairdo too! I’ve got some fancy Parisian cream in my dresser that my papa got me last time he went to France to talk bout the war. Oh oh, oh I’ve even got some of my mama’s makeup. Nico you have the prettiest cheekbones in the planet, can I paint them like my mama does?” Leanne is a whirlwind of Kinetic energy with excitement over this new found project, and Nico almost feels overwhelmed. That is until he glances over to where Bianca is shooting him a gentle smile—so alien from her bombastic effervescence—and he understands that it’s okay. 

I’m gonna always be there for you baby bro…? 

“Sure…Yeah, okay.”

The smile Leanne gives him in return is blinding.

 

***

 

It becomes a ritual of sorts for them. 

Every Friday night—while most of the students of their boarding school would pad off to their rooms to call home to fear wrecked parents over the impending war—Nico and Bianca would sit in the middle of the floor of their minuscule dorm. Bianca would paint his nails a different shade for the weekend (But only for the weekend,) under the guise that her own were far too ravaged from her teeth and it wouldn’t be nearly as esthetically pleasing for all her troubles. It’s a singular moment of time that’s free from any students, or teachers or the dull aching of wanting to remember their parents—It’s a moment of time that’s all for them. Those few hours are when they get to tell each other anything and everything from what their respective weeks were composed of, to divulging to one another furtive thoughts that ordinary people would just lock away into the deepest recesses of their minds. Ordinary people who don’t have a Bianca…Someone who’d always be there for them.

“Dorthy Clemens said that we’re married now,” Nico speaks the non-sequitur while eyeing the emerald varnish that she’s sweeping over his nails. (He’s always been partial to the color green.)

“Oh? And how’s married life treating ya baby bro?” Bianca idly asks—her already long legs kicking up and down in the air. An oversized t-shirt slipping off her shoulder while her eyes stare down at his left hand with a near laser like precision. (Bianca has always been more of a tomboy, so Nico understands how difficult this part—the whole makeup and dress up bit—of being a lady in training must be for her. He still finds it ridiculous that it’s of goal of her’s though, and never passes up an opportunity to let her know exactly how he feels.)

Nico falters back for a moment, almost as if he were scared of what he was gonna say—but no, that’s ridiculous. This is Bianca. Bianca who combs his hair every morning. Bianca who taught him how to trace over the comics of his favorite hero—superman—so he could create stories of his own. Bianca who always, always let him sleep with her in the middle of the night if he ever got nightmares, and always listened to what they were the next morning. This is Bianca, his sister.

And at that realization, everything comes out in a gurgled mess. Words slamming into one another as if racing to get out.

“I don’t like it because now I’m only supposedTa only play with her and now me and Colin can’t read any comic books or nothin together and he says we can’t even eat by each other at dinner cause he doesn’t think he likes me anymore but i don’t know why.”

Bianca—having stopped from painting his nails so to give him her full undivided attention—cranes her brows in that way that tells Nico he’s just confirmed something she’s known since forever. (Just like the time he admitted he’s been stealing some of the chocolate bars she stashes away under her bed.)

“’s alright Neek. You know ‘s okay.” she cards a hand through his hair consolingly, and Nico leans into the touch with a suddenly intense need. “It’s okay that you miss playing with Colin,”

“I don’t even know what I did—He’s the one who wanted to play together first and now he says that cause his dad saw us kiss we can’t do nothin anymore.”

Bianca’s hand momentarily freezes, but then goes back to running through Nico’s mop of ebony as if nothing had happened. Nico is sure he would’ve missed it if he weren’t so attuned to the soothing comfort that the gesture grants.

“You kissed him?”

“Ah yeah,” a strange sort of pain starts to claw against Nico’s chest—a heat throbbing as if their was something to hide. “We had to. I was Superman and I was saving him from the bad guy and Superman always kisses Lois Lane at the end.” Nico doesn’t understand why he’s still talking as if the words were searing and he needed to drag them out before they scorched a mark on him that Nico’s not ready to have.

“Did—Did you like it Neek?” Bianca’s voice is soft—too soft, not giving anything away. And Nico can hardly breathe at the insinuation.

“What? No! ew gross Bianca! OF course not, I just had to. I was Superman and he was Lois Lane!” 

“Oh—Alright,” she nods understandingly at his train of thought. “But you don’t like Dorthy though, right?”

“No,” Nico’s shoulders sag in relief at the shift in conversation. Something easy, and familiar and nothing that makes his guts feel like they’re gonna vomit out of his body. “No I don’t. She always smells like bubblegum and her ponytail pokes my eyes whenever she flings it back.”

“Yeah,” she hums. “that really is the worse isn’t it?”

Bianca goes back to painting his nails, and they don’t talk about it again.

 

***

 

Nico’s never liked change.

He likes his rigid schedule—something he can depend on. He likes getting his typical bowl of chicken parmesan every Tuesday night, and eating it with the friends he’s had since the first grade. Nico likes hiding out to his favorite nook in the library every afternoon to practice his sketching techniques, and he likes how every Friday is set aside for his allotted Bianca time. It’s constant and safe and it doesn’t make him long for a phantom of a life that he could’ve had if his parents were still here.

Nico likes finding security in the mundane. 

So six weeks into their spring semester—when a bizarre lawyer man claims that he’s been sent on behest of their father—Well Nico is less than ecstatic at the sudden upheaving of everything he’s ever known.

“We don’t have a father,” Bianca counters with the gall that no ten year old girl has the right to radiate before full fledged adults—But of course, it’s Bianca. fiery is basically her middle name.

“No, no my dear you do. And this kind gentlemen will take you to him.” Their headmaster—a pudgy, little man with a mustache that covers the entirety of his top lip—has an almost glazed look to his eyes. But it’s obvious that there is no conversation to be had.

The odd lawyer doesn’t bother explaining much of anything to them. Just that their father is as worried as the lot of parents in D.C about America’s rapidly increasing role in the war, and wants them to go to one of his hotel investments to stay safe. 

It’s all Nico could do, sitting in one of the leather seats of the headmaster’s office, not to scoff. Their father had abandoned in them, so why does he suddenly give one fuck about what would happen to he and Bianca. They’ve been doing fine for years—they don’t need him or his stupid investments or whatever else he wants to give.

But Nico bites his tongue—partly because the stilted sounding words of the lawyer tells him that he wouldn’t answer his questions anyhow, but mostly because Nico can spot a sheen of hope in Bianca’s eyes that’s never been there before. If she wants to meet their deadbeat, chickenshit of a father…Well Nico’ll bare his teeth and smile for her and only her.

Before leaving to the Lotus Hotel that afternoon, he and Bianca collect the measly amount of things they actually call their own, which ultimately culminates to a few sets of clothing (On account to their never really needing it with their school’s uniforms,) Nico’s sketchpad, and a couple of photos Bianca got taken of them stuffed into her case of nail polishes that she thought Nico would like. (Sometimes Nico thinks Bianca has built her entire life around him, and he’s not sure how that should make him feel. Grateful that she obviously loves him so entirely, or resentful that she never allows herself to have her own identity outside of being his surrogate parent.) 

“It’s okay Neek,” Bianca drapes her arm around his slight shoulders and flops the green cap he had bought her for that Christmas onto his head as they stand in front of the remains of their residence here—It’s oddly unnerving to see their dorm so naked and lifeless—as if it had not acted as a makeshift home for them since either could ever remember. “I’m here for you.”

He tries to give her a reassuring grin, but suspects it came out looking like a painful upturn of the lips. “I know.”

The worst part of the whole ordeal is that Nico isn’t sure that he actually knows anymore—Something feels wrong about this whole situation. As if they stood on the precipice of there lives changing irrevocably, and neither could do a single thing to stave off the whirlwind edging ever closer.

He only knows one thing for certain

It’ll never be like this again.

**Author's Note:**

> So this peace has been sitting in my drafts for a while now, it's kinda my baby. And acts as some kind of therapeutic release for whenever I get frustrated in how Nico didn’t really get to live up to his potential (One of the many reasons why I’m not really gaga over the last part of the Heroes of Olympus NEGL)
> 
> Pretty please let me know what you think of this part<3 Future parts are gonna be much longer, but I wanted to get a feel for his life pre-series Ja feel?
> 
> Thanks for reading!!
> 
> Come and find me on [Tumblr](http://madziethemagnificent.tumblr.com)
> 
>  
> 
> Hope to talk to you soon below ;)


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